For centuries King Arthur has remained a mystery - the
site of his fabled Camelot long forgotten and the true location of his final
resting place shrouded by the mists of time. Graham Phillips and Martin
Keatman go in search of the historical King Arthur, his Camelot and ultimately
his lost tomb.

In the Middle Ages numerous tales were written about King
Arthur and his famous knights. Although many themes within these so-called
Arthurian romances are clearly invention, a much older manuscript - written
three centuries before the earliest of these tales was composed - records
that Arthur was an historical figure. According to the work of the
ninth-century Welsh monk Nennius,
Arthur was one of the last British leaders to make a successful stand against
the Anglo-Saxons who invaded the country from their homeland in Denmark and
northern Germany in the fifth and sixth centuries AD.
This was during the Dark Ages: an era of anarchy and tribal feuding that
followed the collapse of the Roman Empire.

Nennius does not say where Arthur originated but he does
list twelve of his battles and the last of them, the battle of Badon, is datable from a separate historical source: the
work of the British monk Gildas who wrote within living memory of the battle. In
his De Excidio Conquestu Britanniae ("On the Ruin and Conquest of
Britain"), dating from the mid-sixth century, Gildas makes reference to
the event that seems to have occurred around 500 AD.

In the Arthurian romances King Arthur is said to have
ruled form a magnificent city called Camelot. However, the writers disagree
on its location and its whereabouts has long remained a mystery. So where
did Arthur originate? Where was his seat of power?

In the Arthurian romances Arthur is Britain’s one true
king. According to Nennius, however, he is the leader of an alliance of
British kings. Either way, if he existed, Arthur must presumably have ruled
from the country’s mightiest stronghold. Historically, around AD 500 Britain
had fragmented into a number of smaller kingdoms - the largest and strongest
of which appears to have been the kingdom of Powys. Now merely a Welsh
county, in the late fifth and early sixth centuries Powys covered much of
what are now the Midlands of England and Central Wales. Its capital was Viroconium,
once a thriving Roman town that became the most important city in the country
during the post-Roman era.

Viroconium still survives as an impressive ruin just
outside the village of Wroxeter, some five miles southeast of Shrewsbury in
the county of Shropshire. The latest archaeological excavation there took
place in the mid 1990s and revealed that there was a major rebuilding of the
city around AD 500. The nerve centre of this new Viroconium was a massive
winged building that appears to have been the palace of an extremely
important chieftain. As the work seems to have begun at the very time the
Britons defeated the Saxons at the battle of Badon, it may well have been the
seat of power for the British chieftain who led the Britons at the time - in
other words, the historical Arthur. As Viroconium was the Roman name for the
city, and no records survive of what the Dark Age Britons called it, could it
actually have been the historical Camelot?

Powys was the largest British kingdom at the time of the
battle of Badon and its capital was the most sophisticated in the country.
So who did rule the kingdom of Powys around 500 AD? A tenth-century
manuscript detailing the family trees of important Dark Age chieftains,
catalogued as Harleian MS 3859in the British Library, provides us
with the answer. He is one Owain
Ddantgwyn- Owain White Tooth - the son of a warlord named Enniaun Girt,
whom the manuscript lists as a king of Powys in the late fifth century.

When they first discovered the name of this king, Graham
Phillips and Martin Keatman were disappointed. It seemed that the king who
rebuilt and refortified Viroconium had not been King Arthur after all. That
was until they discovered that the name "Arthur" may not have been
a personal name but a battle-name - a title. The language of the
Romano-Britons was Brythonic (a cross between Latin and the native Celtic
tongue) and it survives almost intact in modern Welsh. The reason being that
many of the Britons were driven into Wales during the Saxon invasion. Still
preserved in Welsh is the word Arth, meaning "Bear", and
many linguists believe that the name Arthur
derived from this word. If this is right then Arthur may actually have been
the king’s battle-name - The Bear. The name of an animal, in some way
typifying the qualities of the individual, was given to many Dark Age kings
as an honorary title.

There is compelling evidence that Owain Ddantgwyn, the
king of Powys around AD 500, had indeed been called The Bear. Many of these
battle-names where inherited by the chieftains’ eldest sons. A whole
succession of Welsh kings, for example, where called the Dragon during the
later Dark Ages, which is why there is still such an emblem on the Welsh
flag. Gildas, writing less than half a century after the battle of Badon,
actually refers to Owain Ddantgwyn’s son Cuneglasse
as the Bear. If Cuneglasse was called the Bear, then so perhaps was his
father.

In King Arthur - The True Story, Graham Phillips
and Martin Keatman reveal the fascinating story of Owain Ddantgwyn, the
historical figure who seems to have inspired the legend of the mighty King
Arthur, ultimately discovering his final resting place in Shropshire at the
heart of rural England.

_______________________________________

"Amazing book... brilliantly presented
thesis" - Daily Mail

"The popular myths fall like
ninepins in King Arthur - The True Story" - Sunday Express

"As in all good detective
stories, they save up their revelation to the denouement in their last
chapter" - The Times

_______________________________________

English editions: HB Century 1992, PB Arrow 1993.

Foreign translations: Heyne (German).

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To discover more
about Viroconium and many other sites associated with the historical King
Arthur in Shropshire, follow the King Arthur in Shropshire Trail by on the
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